The mechanism by which T cells recognize foreign materials has been implicated in cancer. A number of cytolytic T lymphocyte (CTL) clones directed against autologous melanoma antigens, testicular antigens, and melanocyte differentiation antigens have been described. In many instances, the antigens recognized by these clones have been characterized.
The use of autologous CTLs for identifying tumor antigens requires that the target cells which express the antigens can be cultured in vitro and that stable lines of autologous CTL clones which recognize the antigen-expressing cells can be isolated and propagated. While this approach has worked well for melanoma antigens, other tumor types, such as epithelial cancers including breast and colon cancer, have proved refractory to the approach.
More recently another approach to the problem has been described by Sahin et al. (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 92:11810-11813, 1995). According to this approach, autologous antisera are used to identify immunogenic protein antigens expressed in cancer cells by screening expression libraries constructed from tumor cell cDNA. Antigen-encoding clones so identified have been found to elicit a high-titer humoral immune response in the patients from which the antisera were obtained. Such a high-titer IgG response implies helper T cell recognition of the detected antigen. These tumor antigens can then be screened for the presence of MHC/HLA class I and class II motifs and reactivity with CTLs.
Since the individual tumor antigens presently known may be expressed only in a fraction of tumors, the availability of additional tumor antigens would significantly enlarge the proportion of patients who are potentially eligible for therapeutic interventions. Thus there presently is a need for additional tumor antigens for development of therapeutics and diagnostics applicable to a greater number of cancer patients having various cancers.
The invention is elaborated upon further in the disclosure which follows.